


Never Thought I'd See The Day

by kiwiqueen



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, Friends to Enemies, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26142706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiwiqueen/pseuds/kiwiqueen
Summary: "In times of snow, moon, or flowers, I think of you all the more" -Bai Juyi-Byleth chooses the Black Eagles and turns against her former allies in the Church of Seiros.  The war brings her into combat against Claude and her confusing new feelings.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 12
Kudos: 39





	1. Crimson Flower

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is reposted from a little while ago. I wasn't happy with it, so I've made some changes and reuploaded

Byleth stood in the cardinal room on the second floor of Garreg Mach. Edelgard stood at the head of the long table, with Hubert a few steps behind her. The remainder of the Black Eagle Strike Force was gathered around the table, which held a large map of Fódlan covered in wooden figurines painted in primary colors. Each one represented some number of soldiers; she wasn’t certain. She had lost focus when Edelgard had announced their next target.

They were marching on Derdriu to fight against Claude.

At that statement, she felt a sensation in her chest, like a vice grip where her heart should have been. She had felt something similar before, during the attack on the Great Bridge of Myrddin. There, she had been forced into combat against former students of the Officers Academy. It had brought on this same feeling. She had wished that she would not have to feel it again, but even in that moment she had known that such a desire was not especially viable.

This was worse, though. She felt as if the floor was crumbling beneath her, and she was fighting to remain upright while simultaneously struggling not to betray any sign of hesitation to her allies.

She had developed a certain understanding with Claude, through many late nights spent poring over library volumes by candlelight, sparring sessions early in the mornings when no one else was awake. She believed that she had not noticed any connection until the Establishment Day ball, when they had whirled about the floor in a talentless-but-lively approximation of ballroom dance.

And she still did not realize that magnitude of it until she had met him on the battlefield. Though she had promised Edelgard that she would fight with everything she had, she had hesitated when she came face-to-face with him. His intense gaze was among the last images she remembered before her consciousness flickered out.

To her, it felt like only a few weeks had passed since they had crossed blades. The mostly-empty monastery seemed so much emptier in his absence. The knights and followers of Seiros had abandoned the monastery in the wake of the siege five years ago. A sluggish stream of townspeople had returned to the surrounding towns after the Black Eagle Strike Force had reappeared, but it was still a meager portion of the lively population which inhabited the area in even her most recent memories. She hoped that their victory at the Great Bridge would bring more residents back.

She was unsure how much longer the war council went on. Edelgard moved the small figurines around the map in formations, and Ferdinand interrupted periodically to insist upon changes to her strategy. Were her mind not whirling, it might have seemed just like their more innocent days at the academy. The whole affair seemed almost banal.

Her attention was elsewhere.

All of her former students had changed so much while she had been asleep. It had been obvious in some ways: their added height, their longer hair, their increased strength. Other ways were less obvious. She had come to know them quite well, to care for them, and that closeness showed her those ways. Bernadetta’s traumatic reclusiveness had turned to defiant curiosity. Petra’s hostage situation had turned her into a fearsome warrior. Ferdinand’s starry-eyed ideology about nobility had shifted into disdain for those who would abuse their power, those like his father. There was cynicism in their eyes and despair in their voices, even when they spoke of hope. The hesitation had disappeared from those moments just before they brought their blades down across their opponents’ throats. Instead of a class, they were a strike force. Instead of learning to rule a nation, they were working to destroy two.

But no. She had promised Edelgard that she would not think that way. She had witnessed the ways that Faerghus and Leicester were tearing themselves apart already. She had seen how Lord Rufus had run his kingdom into the ground, and as they spoke, the lords of the Alliance were warring using armies that had sworn to protect one another.

Edelgard’s war, their war, would merely remove the foundation that was already rotting. All the faster to institute an order that would protect the people, not allow the ruling class to trample over the vulnerable. Edelgard had already done so within Adrestia. They could spread reform across Fódlan and beyond to the sea to Brigid.

The thought almost reminded her of–

“Claude.”

“Precisely. Once he is removed,” Edelgard knocked a yellow piece on its side, “the Alliance army will have no choice but to surrender. Once their territory is annexed, the kingdom will be within our grasp.”

“Edelgard, you are ignoring the contingencies. Are there not a multitude of other nobles who would gladly take up his position?”

“You know as well as I do, Ferdinand, that no other general in Leicester possesses the same tactical knowledge as he does. Their military will collapse easily without his incessant scheming.”

“That is far too great a risk for you to go gambling our success on it. To take such a chance could devastate all that we have worked for if you are unprepared for the eventualities.”

“And it will leave us vulnerable to attack if we remain locked up inside preparing for situations that will never happen.”

“That is precisely the kind of carelessness that allowed your father’s power to be seized by interlopers.”

“That is quite enough!” Edelgard slammed her gloved hands down on the table, causing several more pieces to fall to the table. “This war council is dismissed. Everyone get some rest. We will reconvene tomorrow morning.”

The Black Eagles filed out of the meeting room to go their respective ways. Byleth did not miss the glance that Ferdinand shot back at Edelgard and Hubert, who remained in position at the table. She made to follow him when the emperor’s voice called after her.

“My teacher?”

She turned. “Yes, El?”

“I only wished to ask if you were alright. I understand that you and Claude were on good terms. I also understand that you have not had the time to. . . acclimate to our new adversaries.”

On some occasions, she cursed her expressionless nature, but on others it was a blessing. “I’m quite fine. I told you, I’m with you.”

“Very well.” Edelgard and Hubert exited the room together, leaving Byleth alone. She examined the horizontal pieces on the table before her, finding the first one, the one Edelgard had pushed over intentionally. Upon closer inspection, it was carved with the shape of a waxing crescent moon. She slipped the figurine into her coat pocket and took her leave of the place.

So, their next military campaign would bring her up against. . .

What were they, exactly? They had, at some point, been something. Not quite teacher and student, in spite of his nicknaming. Allies, probably. Friends, possibly.

Regardless of what they used to be, it was in the past. They were on different sides of history, and Edelgard would never compromise. Even if they both lived to see the end of the war, it was unlikely, now that she had murdered his classmates in cold blood, that he would ever again view her as an ally, far less a friend, or anything else. She would be a fool to even consider it.

She and Claude had never even approached anything aside from friendship. The occasional training exercise had brought them into rather close quarters, but it had never been anything but practical. Besides, considering emotions when it came to those of his station was a dangerous game. Even with her minimal exposure to Leicester politics, she knew that he would be married into another prominent family, not for love.

Stars, why was she even thinking of love and marriage? It was irrelevant. Their ways would clash on the battlefield, and by months’ end one of them would be dead in the ground.

That feeling was returning. A tight constraint where her heart was supposed to be located. She felt her eyebrows knit together and her upper lip contract. The expression came to her face naturally, involuntarily, as though she had eaten a rotten piece of fruit.

She considered the students whom she had chosen. In hindsight, it was unclear to her why she had picked the Black Eagles. At the time, she had barely spoken a few sentences to the house leaders, to say nothing of the other students. She supposed that from the beginning she had felt some kind of kinship with Edelgard.

Not that the Crest thrust upon both of them actually defined either of them.

Reasoning notwithstanding, she had chosen them. And she had come to care for them a great deal more than she had anticipated. Perhaps they could even be called her friends. She hadn’t taught them, but she had spent a good deal of time with Claude and Dimitri and the students in their houses. She had cared for them as well. They were also, she supposed, friends to her.

That was not to say that she never regretted her choice. Though Byleth had little in the way of loyalty to Lady Rhea or the Church of Seiros, it had still been rather uncomfortable to turn her sword against her former allies.

When she reached her dormitory, she removed the figure from her pocket and dropped her coat to the ground.

She reclined on her old bed, thinking once again about the changes that the ex-students had collectively undergone while she had been missing. Even all those years ago, Claude had always been somewhat jaded. He was, by her observation, a skeptic by nature, whose smiles were generally fabricated for the benefit of others. All qualities that had emerged in her more optimistic students over time. She shuddered to think what she might see upon reuniting with him.

Lost in her thoughts, she drifted off to sleep, still fully-clothed, with the crescent-marked figurine clutched in her hand.


	2. The Master Tactician

The ride to Derdriu was a long one, over the Airmid, across the Great Bridge, and through Gloucester. Through every territory that they passed, the people cowered away from their army. The sight of it sent a shiver through Byleth.

Edelgard had pulled her up ahead of the others, without even Hubert by their sides. She wondered idly if it was shrewd to have both of the army’s most prominent leaders alone at the forefront, ripe for an ambush, but it was difficult to make herself care. Besides, she didn’t doubt that the pair of them could dispatch of any petty militia that might be foolish enough to attack them.

She had not been prepared for Edelgard to ask her opinion of Claude.

What was she to say? She could readily admit that she often wondered what might have happened if she had chosen another house, but that was the answer to a different question entirely. She gave her answer a good deal of thought. He was a valuable sparring partner. Surprisingly adept with a sword, despite consistently opting for a bow. Had quite an appetite, also surprising in light of his lean frame. He had virtuous ideals and honorable intentions once one could peel back his layers of deflections and schemes. Of course, all her notions of him were clouded by her years spent asleep, and by her months spent with Edelgard.

But Edelgard had not asked for the objective truth of Claude, merely her impression of him. She answered the only way she could think to.

“He would make a good king.”

Edelgard considered the answer with some level of skepticism, but she seemed to accept it. No kings, Leicester said, as though kings were the source of suffering. The lords of the Roundtable, selfish as any king, propped themselves up against one another, held together by half-broken pacts and mutually-assured destruction. Like a house of straw, ready for the flames to come tearing it down while its owners were busy trying to reassure themselves of its stability.

They made camp in the outskirts of Riegan. It was an affluent territory; even its poorer citizens were comparatively well-off, another feat for which she had to applaud Claude. That, she supposed was a reason for them to preserve their current way of life rather than succumbing to Imperial rule. Even among their anti-Imperial sentiment, though, they were not foolish enough to attack their army. They set up outside a village a few miles from the capital with plans to march at dawn.

Byleth settled herself a little ways from Edelgard and Hubert. A hunting party went out to get meat for dinner, and returned rather promptly. The night passed without incident.

She was the last soldier remaining by the campfire. It burned down slowly into the night, the diminishing of its heat a blessing in the warm night air. Tiny embers threw themselves up from the fire as though they wished to join their brethren in the sky. It surprised her how few wyverns patrolled the night sky near the Leicester capital. A bucket of water sat by the fire. She took it and drowned the fire, choking the remaining ashes with dirt in a series of motions she had repeated countless times as a child, to prevent them sparking again while they slept. It was time to get to bed, lest Edelgard wake and chastise her for avoiding sleep.

The tent smelled of dust with a faint tinge of blood. The sleeping bag inside was thin and did little to pad the uneven ground, but Byleth would hardly sleep a few hours in even a comfortable bed. Readying for bed, she let her coat fall to the ground, removing a small yellow figure from her pocket and setting it beside the lantern which she then extinguished.

She slept lightly but dreamlessly.

Dawn broke like a hornet’s nest over Fódlan’s Throat, bringing them into the mouth of danger with its light. Camp was broken down faster than it had been set up, and enough rations were consumed to fuel their deadly work. They set out with little fuss.

Riegan was silent as death as the Imperial army marched for Derdriu. A grim part of Byleth wondered whether that meant a good omen for their mission. She rarely took comfort in anything other than the sword at her side, but the steady pace that Edelgard set did ease the tension inside of her somewhat.

If Gloucester and the Riegan outskirts had been deathly silent, then Derdriu seemed as though it had never been alive at all. Not a soul could be spotted in its abandoned streets.

The slightly-asynchronous footsteps of the army echoed off the paved roads and watery canals of the aquatic capital. As they approached the walled port, the beating of wyvern wings became audible. A smattering of yellow-clad soldiers awaited them within. A cursory glance told Byleth that they could be defeated easily, but there was no telling what trick Claude might have up his sleeve. They would need to take care not to become overconfident.

“So,” Edelgard observed, “he has blockaded the city and occupied the port.”

Hubert chuckled in that ominous way of his. “Then he will have no choice but to engage us from there.”

The battle commenced in much the same way as the morning had emerged from over the mountains. Arrows poured over both sides of the encircled walls like hail in the morning light. Edelgard commanded their troops into the naval port, where they clashed with the goldenrod armor of the Alliance army in a display not unlike the embers of the previous night’s campfire.

Byleth could easily cut down hordes of enemy soldiers like grass with the Sword of the Creator, but in the light of the new information that Edelgard had shared, it had begun to unnerve her. To fight with the bones of the goddess-turned-girl who had saved her life in the woods so many years ago. She opted for a forged steel sword in its place. She only feared that, when the moment came, the absence of the Sword’s power would not leave her too weak to do what she must. She tried to push away the images of the familiar faces in the crowd.

As expected, the sound of flapping wings grew louder. Several battleships pulled up to the naval port. She had expected reinforcements, but the banners they bore were not familiar to her.

Never mind that, the mounted troops arriving from the east stood between her and Claude, so they needed to be eliminated. Carving a path directly to him would be the path of least bloodshed.

He was standing at the edge of the port, looking calm as he always did, with a glowing, osseous bow in his hand. She thought again of what Edelgard had told her about the Sword of the Creator, and her stomach lurched. That expression was forcing its way onto her face again.

A paladin’s lance grazed against her left shoulder. The pain seared through her arm, bringing her back into the moment. She could deal with Claude when she came to him. She disarmed the paladin who had attacked her and did away with him. Her relic had become an invaluable tool to her, so fighting without it felt bizarre. Still, she had spent years fighting with worse weapons than she wielded now; it would simply take some adjustment before she returned to her normal efficiency.

Dorothea grabbed her arm with a soft touch. A white light glowed, equally soft, under her fingertips. The broken skin and torn muscle fibers of the shallow cut knit themselves back together as the warmth permeated into her flesh. Byleth nodded her thanks and proceeded.

The smooth and even cobblestones that lied on the path between herself and Claude were smattered with blood.

He stood tall, taller than he did in her memories. His braid was noticeably absent. Otherwise, he looked much the same as he had before. Claude removed an arrow from his quiver, spinning it between his fingers and readying it, but he did not loose it, or even raise his skeletal bow, until her deceptively assured footsteps had brought her within a mere few arms’ lengths of him.

“Teach.” His voice sounded genuine. “You should have chosen me instead of Edelgard.” His eyes were filled with sadness. With their proximity, she could see his changes more clearly. He had traded his fake smile for the look of a man at the end of his rope with no knowledge of knot-tying. His gaze lowered almost imperceptibly. “No point in whining about it now, I suppose.”

He leveled the bow at her, left eye falling shut as he stared down the arrow’s shaft at her.

She lunged forward at him, but he sidestepped the point of her blade. He let the arrow fly towards her exposed flank, but she evaded the shot in turn. Each shot and thrust was artfully eluded in a cadence that seemed almost a lethal parody of a tango. Finally, the edge of her blade struck him in the side, tearing through his shirt and leaving a gash over his ribs.

He remained standing with his bow in hand, but his movements were visibly strained. He lifted another arrow. His arms trembled when he attempted to draw back his bowstring. The gripping feeling returned to the space above Byeth’s diaphragm at the sight of Claude bleeding before her. She made to raise her blade toward him, but she struggled as though the wound were in her own side.

An arrow blazed past her, narrowly missing her before burying itself firmly in Claude’s stomach. His eyes widened; she was close enough to hear his sharp exhale. He stumbled one step backwards, then another, before plummeting into the cold waters of Derdriu’s bay. The clutching feeling in her chest felt as though it would break her ribs and rupture her lungs. She was sure that the ground would collapse from underneath her, and she would join Claude in his watery grave.

Byleth turned. Petra stood a few paces behind her, gripping a bow tightly.

“Thank you,” Byleth spoke for the first time, she realized, since the attack had begun. It sounded strangled to her own ears.

“Everyone,” Edelgard’s powerful voice cut through the air, “raise your voices in victory!” She raised Aymr above her head as though in demonstration. “Derdriu is ours! The Alliance has collapsed, and their leader has fallen!”

The cheers of the Imperial troops filled the walled space. Byleth approached the spot where Claude had stood before Petra’s arrow had struck, and there she placed the figurine carved with his Crest as if to say, “Here lies the last of the bloodline of the Elite Riegan. May the Goddess keep his soul.” Then she stepped back into the crowd.

Many congratulations were directed towards her and Petra for bringing down the Alliance leader. The pack of soldiers surrounding her nearly absorbed her, so much that she did not notice when Hubert materialized behind her.

“He had to die.” She felt her eyebrows lower at his statement. “Were he to survive, the dregs of the pro-Church rebellion would never cease to rally behind him. It is better this way. We mustn’t continue to clear away weaker soldiers in his name.”

His bit of almost-reassuring exposition seeming to be done, Hubert disappeared just as soon as he had arrived. She turned to search for him, to get a real explanation from him, but he was nowhere to be seen. Instead, something else caught her eye.

Nothing lay at the water’s edge, where she had left her little memorial for Claude.

They departed Derdriu shortly thereafter. It was a day and a half’s march to the monastery, and the sun was already beginning to descend. Better to put some distance behind them; the sooner they returned to their base of operations, the sooner they could begin their assault on the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus.

That night’s camp was lively. The soldiers sang drinking songs with which Byleth was not familiar in celebration. Many got up to dance in the warm firelight. Ferdinand extended a hand to her in invitation, but she politely declined.

She retired early that night, but the celebrations continued late. The sound of off-key singing was slightly muffled through the cloth walls of her tent, and the shadows of dancing figures played around them like puppets. She lay in bed, surrounded by them, as a shallow sleep washed over her.

The following day’s march was uneventful. Despite being the new rulers of the territories through which they paraded, the residents there still flinched away from them.

“I never intended to touch the cities,” Edelgard murmured. “My only goal was Claude.”

Little damage had come to the towns between them. Still, the people had been touched by the war. They had been subject to wartime rationing, watched troops patrol their streets, sent loved ones off to war.

It was all the more reason to return to Garreg Mach sooner.

When they did return, the sun had just dipped below the horizon. Despite their grand victory, Edelgard did not give any lengthy victory speeches. She wasn’t one for empty words; any declarations would have to wait until their next war council.

Most of the Strike Force went their separate ways, but Byleth went to Petra before she could leave.

“Ah, professor,” she gave her a bright smile. “What can I be doing for you?”

“Would you like to get a drink with me?”

Years ago, there had been a great many taverns surrounding Garreg Mach. Students were not, strictly speaking, allowed to enter them, but Byleth knew that many of them had ignored those rules. She also knew that much of the staff, herself included, chose not to report any of them. Every one of them had closed while she had slept, but one had reopened since her return. It was a small, humble place, but the owner was kind, and they didn’t have many other choices anyway.

They walked there together. Along the way, Petra told her the story of the first time that Dorothea and Caspar had taken her along with them to one of these taverns. An older man had come onto her, and Caspar had broken the man’s nose. She felt the corners of her mouth turning up at the anecdote.

Upon arriving, they each ordered a pint of ale.

“So, professor, you had wanting to speak about something?”

Byleth looked into her cup for a moment before nodding. “What are you going to do when the war ends?”

Petra’s answer came without hesitation. “I will be going back to Brigid and taking the throne. I need to make the lives of my people better.”

She drank deeply as she contemplated Petra’s response. “You love your homeland, don’t you?”

“Yes,” her expression brightened, “I do. I would love for you to have the ability to see it someday.”

“Yeah,” Byleth tried to match the look on Petra’s face, “I think I would like to see the world outside of Fódlan.”


	3. Tempest of Swords and Shields

Byleth followed Edelgard and Hubert out of the infirmary and shut the door behind her. Their losses in the defense of the monastery had been heavy, especially losing Randolph and Ladislava, but they would only grow heavier if they continued to micromanage Manuela while she worked. The defeat of the two generals would hamstring their advance on the Holy Kingdom, but the Church of Seiros had also suffered great casualties.

She had been unable to bring herself to kill Flayn. It made her stomach turn to think of taking the life that she had worked so hard to save. As payment for her mercy, she and Seteth had promised to flee the Knights of Seiros.

If Randolph’s dying report was true, then many Kingdom lords would soon rally their support behind Edelgard’s cause. With any luck, the many deaths on both sides of the previous battle would come to some kind of fruition. Her mind wandered to Fleche, wide-eyed and paralyzed upon hearing what had happened to her brother.

“Many of the others have gathered in the dining hall,” Edelgard announced. “Doubtless they will need some reassurance after the day’s events. Will you join us, my teacher?”

With the attack coming early in the day, she had not yet had a chance to eat, and it was nearly sundown. She nodded.

Byleth walked by Edelgard’s side to the dining hall. Hubert followed a few steps behind as he always did. She was unsure if it was intended to be reassuring to Edelgard or threatening to her. Perhaps both. He never had trusted her.

The remainder of the Black Eagles were already gathered at a table together, speaking in hushed voices when they arrived. Most of them hadn’t been especially friendly with the students of the other houses, but facing their former instructors, not to mention Flayn, was a different matter entirely.

“If we must fight to the death against that kind of opponent,” she heard Dorothea say, “what will become of this world?”

Edelgard set out to encourage the others. Byleth broke off, taking two plates of stir-fried vegetables from the serving dishes at the back of the room. She joined Edelgard at the table and passed one plate to her. Hubert narrowed his eyes at her. As they ate, Edelgard explained the moves that they would take across the Tailtean Plains to attack the kingdom at its capital. Fresh air and dusk light blew through the room from the doors, open to the fishing pond to the south.

A few at a time, her former students dispersed. Soon she was left with only Edelgard and Hubert.

They stood from the table. “I am going to retire to my room for the night. Professor, what will you do?”

It might have been strange for anyone else to ask, but she and Edelgard had taken to tracking one another’s nighttime whereabouts after a few too many times that each had found the other wandering the monastery grounds, kept awake by nightmares.

“I think I’ll go to the library.”

Byleth walked without hurrying. It seemed futile to do so. There was no telling how much longer she would spend living in Garreg Mach as her base of military operations. She knew the scenery well already, but she drank in it anyway. When it was dark, the monastery seemed almost haunted. The moon was just beginning to wane, and it bathed the grounds in its argent light. She passed by the old classrooms, which remained mostly abandoned these days, to move through the reception hall, up the stairs, and down the second-floor hallway to the library.

The library was empty except for a figure in a hooded robe at one of the tables, one of those mages, she guessed. She lit a few candles and selected a book from the shelves, one about the War of the Eagle and Lion. By the low light, she began to read a passage on the battle that had taken place on the Tailtean Plains in Imperial Year 751.

The hooded figure closed their book and crossed the library to sit across the table from her. They removed their hood.

“Claude?” Her voice barely escaped her own throat.

“Teach.” His expression was solemn.

The air between them was silent for a long while. There was no way he could possibly have lived. She had seen him with an arrow in his stomach, falling to his certain death in the waters of Derdiu. He had disappeared into unfathomable depths.

Then again, she had done something similar five years ago. “How did you survive?”

He smiled one of his hollow smiles. “Those of us who are stubborn enough have a way of sticking around.”

“How did you get in here?”

“So many shadowy figures around, nobody notices one extra.”

“I thought you were dead.”

Claude’s empty eyes filled with mischief. “How about we play a little game?” He arose from the table and procured a chess set from one of the shelves lining the library walls. “I’ll give you the first move.”

Her head reeled as they each began setting up their pieces, black ones on his side and white on hers. Claude left the king’s spot on his side of the board empty, filling it instead with the yellow figurine from Edelgard’s war council map. Her eyes went wide. There were a thousand questions that she wanted to ask, and the presence of her memorial piece only roused more, but all logic told her that Claude would be unwilling to answer unless she bested him.

She moved her first pawn to E4.

“What a typical opening move, Teach.” Claude matched her, moving a pawn to E5. “Alright, I’ll play along.”

A tactic he employed so often, to get under his opponent’s skin with his words. She remained silent as she moved a knight to F3.

He moved a knight to C6. “Don’t want to talk?”

She moved her bishop to C4, and Claude played his other knight towards the center opposite the first. She moved her knight to G5.

“That’s fine,” he moved a pawn to D5. “I can do most of the talking.”

She took his pawn with hers, and he took that pawn with his knight.

Byleth took another of his pawns with her knight. He captured the knight with his yellow king piece. “You might have guessed this already, but I wasn’t born in Fódlan.”

She moved her queen to F3.

He moved the yellow piece forward to E6. “Where I come from, the people of Fódlan are looked down on as cowards.”

She moved her untouched knight forwards and towards center.

“Technically,” he moved his knight to D4, “that cowardice runs through my veins, at least on my mother’s side.”

Her bishop captured his knight on D5. “Check.”

He moved his yellow king sideways to D6. “I don’t buy into any of it.”

She moved her queen to F7.

“My mother fell in love with a man from the wrong side of the border. She left behind everything she knew to pursue that love.” He moved a bishop to E6.

She moved her own bishop to capture his.

He took her bishop with his knight. “She was one of the bravest people I know, but saying that doesn’t change anything.”

She moved a knight to E4.

“I came to see Fódlan for myself, but here they see outsiders as beasts,” he emphasized the last word by slamming his yellow piece to D5.

She moved a pawn to C4.

He captured her knight with his yellow piece. “I came to realize that the only way to bring change would be to start anew. Unite the Alliance, then Fódlan, maybe even the world beyond.”

She took his remaining knight with her queen.

He moved his queen to D4, next to the yellow piece. “Break down the walls between us and let a new perspective come rushing in.”

She moved her queen to G4.

“I didn’t know if it was just a pipe dream,” he moved his yellow king to D3, in front of his queen, “or a brilliant ambition.”

She moved her queen to E2. “Check.”

He moved the yellow king to C2. “Not too long ago, I would have said it was too much for one person to accomplish.”

She moved a pawn to D3.

He took her unmoved rook with his yellow piece. “But now Edelgard is almost there. Because she had you on her side.”

She castled king side. “Checkmate.”

“You should’ve chosen me instead,” he leaned forward on his elbows. “You and me. We could go anywhere. Do anything. We could build a peaceful world together.”

Byleth pressed her hands to the table, palms down on either side of the board. “Alright, I’ve won. Now tell me everything.”

Claude stood. She saw him wince for a split second before schooling his features into that charming fake-smile again. He circled the table to stand near her. “I think I’ve told you quite a bit.”

She jumped up from her chair, knocking it backwards in the process. “You’ve told me nothing! How did you survive the battle at Derdriu?”

“I had a trick up my sleeve,” he answered obliquely, “friends on the other side. I thought you would understand that.”

Byleth shook her head. “Why should I even believe that you’re really Claude? That you’re not some imposter like Monica and Tomas?”

“Fair question,” he turned to lean against the table, facing away from her. “I have some. . . connections, let’s call them, in Almyra. One of our generals pulled me from the water, and one of our healers more or less patched me up. It seems I’ve been relying on them quite a bit lately. I had planned to return there, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that my work in Fódlan wasn’t done yet.” His voice grew quieter with every word until he was nearly whispering.

She craned around him to see his face in profile. She did not touch him for fear that he might disappear, or reveal himself to be some magic double. “Then join us. Lend us your strength.”

“I can’t,” Claude rubbed at his eyes. “Edelgard, I just can’t agree with her methods. All the bloodshed, all the betrayal. Fighting alongside those monsters who destroyed Remire.”

“Then why did you come here?”

“I asked myself the same thing,” he turned to face her. “I think I needed to see you, at least one more time.” They were almost close enough to touch. As he leaned in closer to her, eyes half-lidded as if to kiss her, she shoved him away with a jab to his sternum with her open palm.

“If you’re not going to join us, then you should get out of here.”

“I see,” Claude had staggered several steps backward. “Right up until the very end, I’ve read this whole thing terribly wrong.” He exited the library, his footsteps moving quickly.

Byleth followed him out the library door to see him climbing out the window to the left. She rushed over. An ivory-white wyvern was flying out into the night, with a smudge of gold on its back.

She slumped into a seated position on the stone floor. Claude, alive, and still making trouble. She sat there for a long while, contemplating his words, before she stood and walked shakily to her room. The stone surfaces of the monastery shimmered in the starlight, but she took in none of it.

In her room, Byleth sank into her bed and stared, unseeing, at the ceiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna be honest, the lukewarm reception I've gotten is making it a little hard to find the motivation to keep writing this. Let me know, I guess, if you're interested in more


	4. Lady of Deceit

Byleth’s footsteps echoed down the second-floor hallway.

Arianrhod was called the Silver Maiden. The name had not made much sense to her, but Hubert had explained with a sly sneer that it had never been penetrated, never been taken by anyone. Its walls stood a pure, pristine silver since some Count Rowe many hundred years ago fled the Empire and brought Her along to Faerghus with him.

She supposed that it all existed in past tense now.

Where the Silver Maiden had once stood there was now only a crater in the ground, leveled by pillars of light that had destroyed structures and people, soldiers and citizens, all indiscriminately. If their army had stayed there instead of continuing on to plan the true Fhirdiad invasion. . . she shuddered to think about it. This was, if Hubert was correct, the second such occurrence in Fódlan’s history, with the first being a so-called divine attack on Ailell. She wondered what Sothis would have said.

It had been some time since Byleth had thought about the goddess that had once made her home inside her mind. Just thinking about her brought on so many mixed feelings that she tried to avoid it if she could, focusing her attention on the war instead.

Arianrhod’s nickname reminded her of her own. Ashen Demon. Where the Silver Maiden had been burned to the ground, the Ashen Demon stood in its wreckage. All its virtue meant nothing when it was matched against an infernal being like her. The city had been destroyed in an attack from those strange figures that accompanied Edelgard’s uncle, an attack that they would claim was from the goddess, and here she was fighting against both. Perhaps she would be the next to go down in flames.

She stepped into the dimness of the library. The smell of old books and candle wax permeated the small space. Many of her academy days had been spent there, trying desperately to fill in the gaps in her knowledge left by her upbringing away from the Church. Hours had been spent reading, and she had barely scratched the surface of the many tomes contained there. She selected a volume on the geography of the Leicester Alliance and scanned the glossary for mentions of Aillel.

There were a few other people in the library. Nobody she recognized, and none in those strange hooded robes. Since the residents had begun returning to the nearby towns, the place was rarely empty.

Claude had also spent a good amount of time there. If what he had said was true, if he was from Almyra, then his ravenous search for knowledge about Fódlan would make sense. It would match her own. But that was all hypothetical.

He was a liar and a trickster by his nature, and they were on opposing sides of a war, his friendly words be damned. He had lied countless times before, and she had no reason to believe he would stop now. That he was Almyran, that his mother had simply left Fódlan, that he, too, would leave and stop his meddling, it was all ridiculous just to consider it.

Byleth was reminded of an incident involving him at the academy. She had been wandering the monastery grounds on one of her sleepless nights when she came across him, smuggling a few skins of wine from the dining hall. He had hidden all but one under his cloak when he had noticed her approaching and offered an excuse; Leonie had accidentally injured Raphael in an impromptu sparring session. Marianne was already in bed, and Professor Manuela was nowhere to be found, so he figured to get some alcohol from the kitchens to disinfect the wound until a healer could be hailed in the morning. She hadn’t believed him, but she had let him go. She had tailed him, silently, like she had chased so many deer on the hunt in her mercenary days, back to Raphael’s dorm, where he had passed out the wineskins to the cheering of his classmates.

At the time she had felt little beyond the vague annoyance at being lied to and a counterintuitive desire to go to them, but hindsight sent a pain through her chest like a poisoned weapon. It reminded her of the alizarin of Leonie’s blood seeping into the naphthol of her hair as she lay dying at the Great Bridge. She tried to drag her thoughts towards facts instead.

Of course, Raphael and Leonie really had been sparring. Marianne really had been asleep, and Manuela likely had been off drinking somewhere. After all, the best lies sprouted from a kernel of truth, and she and Claude both knew it well.

His excuse about Raphael’s wound had spilled from his mouth with as much ease as his self-exposition during their chess match. Byleth had only to parse the truth from the fiction.

Garreg Mach’s library contained little information about Almyra. It was the truth, that the people of Fódlan viewed Almyrans as savages. But that told her nothing that she didn’t know already. Anyone from Leicester could have told her that. He could just as easily have chosen Almyra as a false country of origin because of the dearth of information. She shut the geography book with a loud thump.

She was still at square one, like a pawn at E2 with a yellow king looming on the opposite side of the board.

The Alliance army had had wyvern-mounted soldiers on their side flying a foreign banner. It was true, that Claude had allies in Almyra. Such a feat was impressive in and of itself, given the hostility that had long existed between the two nations. Almyran heritage would surely have eased that tension.

Edelgard’s ambitions were not so far removed from Claude’s. She had welcomed strategic input from Petra and the military leaders she had brought over from Brigid, while her uncle and his ilk brushed them off as barbarians. It could well be true, that the only way to bring change would be to start anew, break down the walls and let a new perspective come rushing in.

But “could well be true” wasn’t enough.

Byleth removed the chess set from its place on the shelf. It had been returned there at some point between Claude’s sudden departure from the monastery and her return to the library the following day. She was unsure who had replaced it there, but it was a mystery she did not care to solve. She removed three pieces from the box: a bishop, a knight, and the black king. They were beautiful, she realized, carved with delicate, intricate engravings, from some kind of stone and painted with a black pigment that was chipping around the edges.

The thin plane between truth and fiction was defined by three pillars. One, the only way to bring change was to start anew. Two, Claude von Riegan was Almyran. Three, he was still alive.

For all her questioning, Byleth had never truly found a reason to believe that the person she had seen the previous month was really Claude. Tomas’ clone had fooled them all for the better part of a year before revealing his true, hideous form. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to believe that a doppelganger version of Claude would have killed her once she had been separated from the other Black Eagles. But common sense rarely applied to those strange people, and it rarely applied to Claude.

Byleth knocked the game pieces to the ground with the back of her hand in a fit of impatience. It didn’t make sense; he didn’t make sense. Then she bent over to pick them back up. This was likely how they had become chipped.

Battle strategy was no issue to her. It was all pure logic. It made sense. Claude acted against reason, unpredictably, dangerously. It made her head ache. She put the last remaining chess pieces back in their box and exited the library. Her clothes still smelled of sweat and smoke, and she needed to bathe.

Byleth walked away without noticing that the yellow piece had disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back again after two months of not updating. Thanks to everyone who left comments on the last chapter; they really helped me stay motivated to keep writing (and they'd be appreciated on this chapter too)


	5. Field of Revenge

The rain had not stopped falling since early morning. It wasn’t raining hard, barely more than a mist, really, but it was enough to dye the skies gray and enough to keep most of the monastery’s residents inside. Byleth was lying in her bed, turning her father’s ring over in her hands. Since taking it from the captain’s office, it had remained in a bag on a bookshelf in her dorm. She had hardly even thought of it.

But with the siege on Fhirdiad fast approaching, her allies would certainly go their separate ways soon enough.

The ring was elegant: gold inlaid with what looked to be emeralds, but Byleth was far from an expert geologist and further from a great jeweler. It was, frankly, surprising that her father had owned anything so beautiful, but the way he wrote about her mother in his diary made it somewhat more believable.

There was a firm knock at the door.

“Come in.”

Ferdinand appeared in the doorway. “Professor,” he announced with a flourish of his arms to the mostly-empty room, “Edelgard is calling a council in the cardinal’s room. She has requested your presence.”

She slipped the ring into a coat pocket and followed Ferdinand out the door. Rain dampened their hair. Ferdinand’s became frizzy in the drab atmosphere, and hers was probably doing the same. He filled the space between them with chatter that she hardly heard.

When they arrived at the council room, Ferdinand held the door open for her. Byleth nodded at him to show her appreciation for the gesture. Ferdinand filled a vacant seat between Bernadetta and Dorothea. Byleth sat at Edelgard’s right, across the table from Hubert.

“It seems that everyone has arrived now.” Edelgard spoke at length about their plan to march on Fhirdiad. Little of it was information that Byleth did not already know. That they were expecting resistance at the Tailtean Plains. That the combined forces of the Royal Army and the Knights of Seiros would likely outnumber them. That Faerghus would still be below-freezing at this time of the year. She supposed her presence here was mostly a formality.

Her fingers traced the imprint of the ring in her pocket. Her father had wanted her to give it to someone she loved.

Byleth looked around the table.

She supposed that she loved Edelgard, in a way, but it was not in the way that her father had loved her mother. No, she loved Edelgard the way the wind loved a banner. She loved Edelgard’s ideals, her determination to bring a better life to her people. Their combined forces could amplify their voices, but the wind would move on, and the banner would still stand in its absence.

Hubert had never shown her anything but disdain, and she had little in the way of affection for him in return.

Ferdinand was a gentleman, always kind to her, but he was kind to everyone.

Linhardt, she believed, would never love anyone or anything the way he loved his research.

Caspar, for all the height he had gained in her five-year absence, was still a child to her.

“Professor,” came Edelgard’s voice, “would you like to add anything?”

She did not, but she felt that Edelgard expected her to say something regardless, to raise their allies’ morale. She stood. “I may have missed many of the steps that brought you all to where you are now,” she said, “but I am proud of the progress you have made, both as your teacher and as your friend. The path that lies ahead of us will not be an easy one, but I trust in your strength to guide all of us through it.”

Edelgard nodded with a thoughtful smile, apparently satisfied with her speech. “Thank you. This council is adjourned.” The Black Eagles trickled out of the meeting room.

Byleth found that she often did not know what to do with her hands. They had held a sword in them for so much of her life that the absence of one left them grasping at empty air, itching for the cold weight of steel. The metal of the ring that they gripped from their place in her pockets was far from that of a weapon.

It was raining harder now, but she could hardly bring herself to care. The wet earth before her parents’ grave squished softly below the heels of her boots. It seemed foolish, in retrospect, how she had not realized the way that Jeralt had continued to pine after her mother to the moment he died. The words that he had written about her mostly did not stay in her head, they were mostly were foreign to her, but a few lines of poetry remained. About her eyes, green as the grass that sparkled with dew in the morning sunlight.

That kind of love that would lead a cold-blooded mercenary to write something so, frankly, cloying was not a love that had existed in the council room with her.

No, the only eyes staring back at her from her father’s journal were green like sin, sparkling in the sickly light of celestial bones, staring intently at her over a chess board.

Stars, why she was thinking about Claude was a puzzle to her. He was dead, as far as any of her allies knew, and long gone if he knew what was good for him. The question of whether she loved him was irrelevant. From opposite sides of a war and opposite sides of a mountain range, it was impossible.

A voice in her head that sounded like his told her that they had both done the impossible before.

But she had rebuffed him once already, and she did not believe that Claude was fool enough to try again.

A part of her wanted to leave the ring there at the grave. Let the rain and the mud reclaim it. Let the ring once again unite her mother and father, even in death, in a love unlike one that she would allow herself. Certainly, there was something poetic about that, right? Still, she kept it gripped in her hand, telling herself it was out of respect for her father’s wish.

The rain was growing harder still. Her boots were sinking into the mud, Byleth turned her back from her father’s grave and walked away.

Where the paths diverged, she turned right towards the bath house instead of going straight to her dormitory. After all, what would she do there but lie back and continue contemplating the ring?

Her footsteps rang out in the quiet bath house as she gathered up a towel and a bar of soap. She stripped of her layers of clothing and lowered herself into the warm bathwater. She had not realized how cold she had been out in the rain. Two fingers traced over the scar on her shoulder, one she had gotten in the battle at Derdriu. Claude had not landed a hit on her during their fight, so this scar was the closest thing she had to a remnant of the battle against him

She shook her head, sending droplets of water flying from the tips of her hair. How ridiculous to be romanticizing the confrontation in which they had tried to kill one another.

Byleth lathered the soap between her hands and ran the suds across her body and through her hair.

She dried herself with a towel and changed back into her damp clothing, regretful at her choice not to retrieve dry clothes from her room before bathing.

When she returned to her room, she stripped them off immediately. She considered getting in bed without putting on dry clothes, but the vernal chill permeating the old building told her that it would not be a good idea, to say nothing of the possibility of a late-night emergency. She dressed herself hastily in a simple linen shirt and trousers and fetched the ring from her coat pocket. She left the soggy clothes on the floor and climbed into bed. She stared intently into the sparkling surface of the ring’s gem, but she was hardly thinking about marriage. There were only so many thoughts that she could think about marriage in one day.

Scenarios of the siege ran through her head. Dimitri, in his revenge-fuelled rage, was likely to send his troops in full force. Tactics books told her that the Kingdom Army had a penchant for honorable, front-force tactics. He could follow that precedent, or he could turn to more. . . unsavory methods in his pursuit of Edelgard’s head. It would behove them to be prepared for either scenario. If they were to meet resistance on the Plains as Edelgard predicted, they would be at a disadvantage, with Dimitri’s army more familiar with the terrain. Perhaps tomorrow she would search for geographical texts in the library to pinpoint strategic locations. . .

Those thoughts chased one another around the inside of her skull until she drifted into a fitful sleep. The ring stared intently back at her, an eye as green as envy in its golden face.


End file.
